Appraising
by NayanRoo
Summary: A captured world; a son dead to his family. Breaking someone takes many forms. BenxVestara


When the Sith fleet arrives in orbit around Coruscant, and their drop teams begin to finish the work Daala's hired Mandalorians had begun on the Jedi Temple, Vestara is not at all surprised when Ben bursts into her room, hair a mess, blue eyes wide. He ran right here, the minute the first reports woke his father, the minutes the first screams of terror began to echo through the Force. As they stood there, younglings in the Temple were being taken by the Sith; they would be kept, indoctrinated, raised in the proper traditions rather than the weak ones of the Jedi.

But that is not Vestara's concern. Her focus is entirely on the young man, begging with her, pleading her to tell him she did not bring this down on them. His heart is in his eyes. It makes her sick to see such a flaw in an otherwise flawless specimen.

But this flaw can be cut and eliminated from the finished gem. Of this, Vestara is sure.

"Tell me," Ben says, and if she were not herself, she would have capitulated there. But Vestara is a Sith, and the Sith do not capitulate to the Jedi. And besides that, she has much greater plans for him.

"This was my doing," she replies calmly, the illusion of a smirk on her face becoming a real smirk as she sees the pain take him. Vestara pulls a small rodlike out of her pocket, thumbs it on. She acquired this from one of the black-market dealers, down on the lower levels of the city. It is, she has been assured, most effective at stopping anyone. Including Jedi.

_Especially _Jedi.

Ben's blue eyes make her pause a moment, finger hovering over the trigger. "Don't worry, Ben," she says sweetly. "You aren't going to die."

She pushes the trigger, and watches dispassionately as gold sparks shoot from the end of the device. A moment later, Ben slumps to the floor. He's not a big person, but even if he was, she would have no problem. With a wave of her hand, Vestara lifts Ben into the air with the Force, and pushes him along in front of her.

*

Ben wakes up, and Vestara is beside him. For a moment, he forgets what's happened between the time he was knocked out and now, and smiles at her, lifting a hand to touch her face and brush her brown hair out of it--but his hands are bound, only able to lift up a little way, and Vestara gives him that sweet smile again.

"It's better if you don't struggle," she says. "Here, eat."

But Ben purses his lips and turns his head away when she brings the food near. "Why would you do this?" he asks, and his voice is hard. "Why would you betray the people who took you in?"

"Poor, silly Ben," she says, stroking his hair. Idly, Vestara wanders if all his children will have this vibrant hue. Part of her hopes not; but part of her thinks that, if mingled properly with her own, it might produce a lovely russet shade--the color of a bloody sunset through smoke, perhaps. "Betrayal implies I was on your side in the first place. And I think you know the answer to that."

Ben doesn't look at her. His jaw is set in an angry line, brows drawn together as he figures out the meaning of her words. He really is quite smart, for a Jedi, she thinks. "You lied to me. To all the Jedi. You lied so we could take you in and you could bring us down from within."

"Very good."

"So then why don't you just kill me?" He looks at her, and for the first time since she began her seduction of him, the look in his eyes truly makes her gasp, sends a jolt through her. Ben is angry, though she can feel him seeking to control it. "You've probably killed all the other Jedi."

"No, not all. The Jedi are spread out too much, and doubtless there will be enclaves of your pathetic Order on many planets. But the central hub has fallen, and the High Lords and Ladies sit in Council there." Vestara caresses Ben's cheek. Truly a fine specimen, despite his being a Jedi. "But we are not on Coruscant. We will not be set foot on its surface again for a long time."

"How long?"

Vestara laughs, a bright sound incongruous with her nature. "It all depends on you."

*

One day, some four years after she has brought him to Kesh, Vestara comes into the house she and Ben live in and hands him something very familiar.

It is his father's lightsaber.

Ben cries for a long time that night, and when the sniveling finally stops, Vestara lets herself into the room. His eyes are open, and those blue eyes have never and will never lose their brilliance, but some light has gone out of them. Vestara smirks, her scarred lip making the expression more menacing than it already is.

"There is no going back," she says. Ben looks at her, and as it did on the ship to Kesh just after the destruction of the Temple, the anger in his gaze jolts her.

"I've got no reason to go back now," he says. The edge to Ben's voice makes Vestara shift on the bed, leaning over him. Her hair falls as a curtain around their faces.

His breath catches. In one way, she thinks with a pleased feeling as his fingers grab her belt, she is quite pleased that some parts of him haven't changed.

*

It does take a long time to break Ben, but Vestara had thought it might. He has been too misused, too exposed to the ways of the other Sith, of the Caedus he knew, to break or to turn quite so easily. When their first son is born, he is still not completely under her control.

But he comes obediently enough when she calls, as the Keshiri midwives are taking away the soiled bedding and she holds little Brenin, sitting with a blanket over her lap and the infant's little fists waving in the air.

"He seems beautiful," she says appraisingly, and is pleased when she feels a small ripple of discontent from Ben but nothing else. Five years ago, when she first led him out of the ship onto Kesh, he would have raged against her. As it is, she makes a note of that small disobedience so she remembers to train it out of him. "Perhaps he will have your hair. It seems a different shade than the Khai family standard."

"Perhaps." Ben fidgets a bit, and discerning what he wants, Vestara lifts the cloth-wrapped bundle in her arms. He calms when he holds his son, looking into the deep blue eyes with something like wonder. "He's going to be strong."

"Of course," Vestara says, smiling widely. Despite everything, she's quite pleased. "I expected nothing less."

*

Over the next ten years, she has six more children by Ben-- two more sons and four daughters. One son and two of the daughters are lost to normal sibling infighting. Now that the Tribe's numbers are swelling, there is less need to damp the natural inclination to bicker that they curtailed for so long.

Still, Vestara is not pleased. She took time out of completing the breaking and turning of her mate and out of her role in the continued expansion of the Tribe's sphere of influence to bear those children, returning to Kesh each time when she was partway through her seventh month so that they might be born on the soil of the home world and then caring for each for another three before returning to her command. Still, she is not left unaware of the goings-on of her offspring.

When he is seven, Brenin kills another child in his year-group at the training academy for implying that his parents are in love. Vestara could not have been prouder when she heard the news. After that, she begins bringing her children and Ben along with her. Ben sometimes gives her ideas that she could not see, and she comes to think of him as a valued asset, if not an equal.

And, as promised, one day she brings Ben back to Coruscant.

*

The planet is different than Ben remembers. It's still a planetwide metropolis, of course; the Tribe has no interest in remaking Coruscant, but something about it feels different.

Ben sees his reflection against the night-side of the planet. He now bears around one eye the painted-on mirror image of the markings Vestara wears. It marks him as her property.

Once, that would have bothered Ben. Now it defines him.

"It's been twenty years since I was here," he says softly, to no one. His voice has changed, too. It's now the deep tenor of an adult. But, had it fallen on the ears of his family, they would be hard-pressed to find any trace of the sixteen-year-old they knew in it. He is a member of the Tribe now, a Sith, and he is Vestara's.

She stands beside him, clad in skintight black synth-leather. Far too vain to allow any softening of her body, motherhood has nonetheless added a curve to her hips, a roundness to her breast. Always appraising, Vestara examines her own reflection, the changes that bearing children has wrought on her, and finds it satisfactory.

"And?"

Ben shrugs. He is in brown and black, red hair curling slightly over the collar of his tunic. The black tabard is embroidered in silver. It looks rather striking, and Vestara thinks to herself that when they retire to their quarters for the night, she may come away with another child, her last. Vestara is vain, but has found that all the mess and the pain is quite worth the result of the continuation of her line. If Brenin's progress is any indication, the Skywalker genetics combined quite favorably.

"It was an observation," he says. "Are we leaving now?"

"Impatient," she chides him, but turns on her heel, the black shimmersilk of the cape she has tossed over her shoulders shining in the light. "I should not let you pilot us down, but I don't have the patience."

Really, though, Ben makes piloting look like art, and her parents and peers had helped Vestara cultivate a passing good eye for art.

*

A strange thing happens when they are planetside.

In the big circular plaza outside what was once the main government building, a silver-haired man with startlingly blue eyes comes up to Ben, as he stands pointing out various landmarks to his younger son, Eirian.

"Ben," the man says, and there is so much relief and affection in the man's voice that Ben turns to look, a hand protectively on his son's shoulder. This wouldn't be the first time that a rival has tried to kill him or his children through subterfuge. "Ben, you're _alive!_"

"Who are you?" he asks, hand resting on his lightsaber. The man's relieved expression slowly becomes one of confusion.

"It's me, Ben," the man says, his eyes (something's familiar about them but Ben can't place it) betraying a flash of sadness. Ben doesn't think he'd know anyone who would wear their emotions so openly. "It's your father."

Ben snorts, and turns away. "You're crazy," he says, and starts back toward the speeder they've been using since coming to the surface.

Behind him, the man raises his voice, making himself heard clearly above the noise of the plaza. "Search your feelings, Ben. You know I'm not lying."

Ben sends Eirian off to the speeder, then looks over his shoulder at the stranger. There's something familiar in the face, in the other's presence even--something that Ben feels he should know, but that he's forgotten--but he dismisses it as he thinks of it.

"My father is dead," he says, and climbs into the speeder. Vestara is expecting him back at the suite of rooms they've been given while they stay here, and he knows she doesn't like it when he's late.


End file.
